


Abbagliamento

by Srin



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Porn with Feelings, brief appearances from Andy and Nile, metaphors as an excuse for porn or possibly the other way around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:06:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Srin/pseuds/Srin
Summary: Joe is so singularly bright, and Nicky’s only human, he can’t keep looking at the landscape when he has the sun in his eyes. Joe could probably explain it better, with the perfect imagery to evoke how it isn’t about anything else being less, but about his beloved beingmore. Nicky’s never been the poetic one. He just knows that when Joe touches him, Joe’s warmth, his glow, his boundless love, fill Nicky’s senses so completely that nothing else matters.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 32
Kudos: 205





	Abbagliamento

**Author's Note:**

> 'Abbagliamento' is an Italian word that can be translated as dazzlement, or flash-blindness - the experience of being exposed to a very bright light and having difficulty seeing anything else for a while.

“-cuddled up at night, but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen them kiss,” Nile is saying.

“You wanna see them kissing, just ask, they’re not shy,” Andy says.

On hearing their voices, Nicky stops before he reaches the door, curious. He has long had a habit of pausing outside an occupied room to get a sense of what’s going on inside before entering, which has proved useful on many occasions over their long lives. He thinks of it as reconnaissance; Andy and Booker call it lurking. (Joe calls it _sexy_ lurking.)

“It’s not that I _want_ to see it,” Nile says. “I just – it’s weird that I haven’t. Isn’t it?”

“Look at it this way. Most of the couples you see sucking face all the time, either they’re new, or they’re completely oblivious, or they’re real insecure. Any of those sound like Joe and Nicky?”

“No, I guess not.”

Andy isn’t wrong; they’re centuries past new, Nicky doesn’t think they’ve ever been the sort of oblivious she means, and they certainly don’t have anything to prove, to each other or anyone else. Nicky doesn’t need Joe’s mouth on his to know he is loved, doesn’t need to put on a show for anyone else to know that they belong to one another. But that isn’t the only reason why, apart from moments of acute stress or occasions when they do want to make a point, they tend to reserve their touches for private times.

Nicky doesn’t need to be touching Joe to want and feel wanted. The thing is, when they _are_ touching, it’s incredibly difficult to focus on absolutely anything else.

If they sit across from one another at a table, or take different seats in a lounge, or leave some open space between them standing in a room, then the world is a rich tapestry, full of textures and colours and characters, of which Joe is just one. A very dear one, a very important one, but still, one among many. Nicky might notice that Joe’s hair looks particularly good today, might be warmed by a smile directed at him, might enjoy sharing a joke that no one else gets, but these things do not necessarily take precedence over whatever else is going on. Joe’s hair is a detail, just like Andy’s jacket or Nile’s earrings are details. Joe’s smile is a thread, woven in amongst all the other threads, and sometimes the thread of Joe’s smile sinks into the background because the foreground is occupied with something else, whether that is the job they are doing or the story Nile is telling or the onions Nicky is chopping for dinner.

If they sit pressed together in a booth, or hold hands on a couch, or lean against each other in a kitchen, the world ceases to be a tapestry. The world becomes a dark, empty space: a large room with a single small window, a vast cave with a single narrow opening, an enormous stage with a single tightly-focussed spotlight. When they touch, Joe is all that that single source of light illuminates, and anything else is no more than a vague shape in the shadows, irrelevant.

Well. Maybe that isn’t a good metaphor. That makes it sound bad, like Joe’s presence somehow diminishes the rest of the world, and that’s not it at all. It’s the opposite, really. The rest of the world stays the same, but Joe is so singularly bright, and Nicky’s only human, he can’t keep looking at the landscape when he has the sun in his eyes. Joe could probably explain it better, with the perfect imagery to evoke how it isn’t about anything else being less, but about his beloved being _more_. Nicky’s never been the poetic one. He just knows that when Joe touches him, Joe’s warmth, his glow, his boundless love, fill Nicky’s senses so completely that nothing else matters.

Joe is always everything, but when they are touching, Joe also becomes the _only_ thing.

It’s not that Nicky’s completely incapable of paying attention to anything else while in contact with Joe, that really would be a problem, but it takes a profound effort to do so. It’s like slogging through knee-deep mud, like fighting against a powerful current. He can do it, he does do it when he has to, but he would rather not. It’s much better to look at the tapestry when the tapestry needs looking at, and bask in Joe’s light when he doesn’t have to try and squint past it at something else.

They pretty much all agree that Krakow ’81 was awful, but the worst part for Nicky wasn’t the terrible food or the freezing weather or the profoundly unpleasant contacts or even the repeated gruesome deaths. It was spending the best part of three days stuffed into a space the size of a closet with Joe pressed all along his back, breathing into his ear, and having to force himself to concentrate on surveillance while every instinct was screaming at him that nothing mattered other than Joe’s hands, Joe’s heat, the rumble of Joe’s voice that he could feel in his chest every time Joe spoke. Booker snarked about how that part must have been a dream for them and Nicky nodded along and didn’t make a thing of how wrong he was because there was no point, but Andy must have caught something in Nicky’s expression or maybe in Joe’s because she didn’t join in on that ribbing. Instead, she started a debate about the relative merits of Polish and Russian vodka that was, for her and Booker at least, far more interesting.

Nicky thinks, sometimes, that food and water and air would all become superfluous as long as he could have Joe’s touch constantly, endlessly. Though that isn’t really true either; for all that Andy likes to joke about everyone’s ratio of ‘little deaths’ to real deaths, Nicky suspects that he and Joe had a few that were both, back in the early days. Not violent ones, not because they were trying to kill each other anymore at that point. No, he thinks they both might have genuinely expired from thirst or hunger once or twice while they were so utterly consumed by one another that they weren’t even sparing a moment to eat or drink.

Nicky doesn’t tell Andy this, doesn’t talk about this to anyone other than Joe. Andy’s right, too, that they aren’t shy; he will happily tell anyone who’s willing to listen – and people who aren’t, if the situation calls for it – how much he loves Joe, but no one else needs to know how thoroughly Joe’s touch blinds him to the rest of the world. It had scared him, right at the beginning of their relationship. That Yusuf, kind, clever, charming, beautiful Yusuf, should so utterly dominate his awareness, terrifying though that was, had seemed only natural; that Yusuf could feel anything remotely similar for him had seemed impossible. He had dreaded the day when Yusuf would realise how a simple brush of his fingers over Nicolò’s hand was enough to make Nicolò fall at his feet like a suppliant at an altar, and think him ridiculous, pathetic, but that day never came. Instead, Nicolò came to understand that he did not have to be afraid, that the words of adoration that Yusuf whispered in his ear were not artistic hyperbole but unguarded honesty. That Yusuf was never going to deride his need, because his own was just as great. That Yusuf was not merely an attentive lover but every bit as transfixed by the union of their bodies as Nicolò was.

As Nicky still is. It’s on his mind, now; he isn’t going to do anything about it, not yet, but he knows he’ll be looking at Joe a little more than usual for the rest of the day, anticipating the time when they’re alone at night a little more keenly. He’s still just a touch self-conscious about it, always feels slightly too exposed when the obsession surfaces like this, even if no one other than Joe could possibly tell. But it’s a small, almost exciting sort of disquiet now, not the sickening fear it was before he knew Joe felt it too. Joe probably will notice, he usually does, and knowing that ramps up the anticipation a little more still. There’s a curious sort of pleasure in it, in feeling a bit delicate but knowing that this fragility, that any weakness he ever has, is safe in Joe’s hands.

Nicky waits before walking into the room with Andy and Nile, long enough so that the conversation has shifted and Nile doesn’t need to feel weird about the possibility of having been overheard. He talks to them about what needs talking about, does what needs doing for the day, looks at Joe across the table in the restaurant where they eat dinner and keeps his hands to himself. When they are back in the hotel where they are currently staying, Nicky hugs Andy without saying anything because he noticed, when he wasn’t touching Joe while they ate, that she had that look that meant she was thinking of Quynh. He passes Nile the brochure for a chiaroscuro exhibit at the city’s art museum that he picked up from the tourist display in the hotel lobby, because while he was not holding Joe’s hand this afternoon he noticed her looking at a poster for it on a bus shelter. He says good night to Andy and Nile, and nods politely at the other hotel guests who pass them in the hall, and senses the promise of Joe’s touch like the heat of the sun behind closed curtains. Almost, almost there.

He and Joe go into their room, and lock the door, and check the windows, and act out all the other mundane evening rituals, moving around each other easily because it is almost but not quite time to forget about the tapestry. Nicky wets a washcloth while Joe isn’t paying attention and puts it on the bedside table, because he knows neither of them will want to get up when they need it and he’ll have no attention to spare for such things once he finally has Joe’s hands on him. Nicky showers first and doesn’t bother dressing after, just putters about in one of the complimentary bathrobes while Joe takes his turn.

And then Joe comes out and Nicky breaks orbit, stops fighting Joe’s gravity, lets himself be pulled into the light. Joe is sitting on the edge of the bed, towel around his waist, reaching into the bag on the floor for something. Nicky catches his hand, and Joe looks up, grinning because he knows, of course he does, and abandons the bag. Joe scoots back, leaving the towel behind, sprawls out naked in the middle of the bed, and Nicky sheds the robe and crawls over him, into his waiting arms, and everything else fades away.

They just kiss for a while, gentle and unhurried. Νicky floats in the warm contentment of losing himself in Joe’s touch, Joe’s hands roaming over his back, the scratch of Joe’s beard on his cheeks, the slick pressure of Joe’s tongue, the way their limbs slot together. Joe’s body under his feels better than the softest mattress and finest sheets. Eventually, when they’re both hard, movements getting a little more deliberate, Joe breaks off and murmurs,

“What do you want?”

And Nicky says, “Don’t care, just want you,” because it’s true, he likes everything they do in every way they do it and has nothing specific in mind now, and because Joe asked in the way he always asks when he does have an idea already but doesn’t mind putting it aside if Nicky is set on something else.

“Fuck me?” Joe asks, rolling them to their sides so Nicky can reach back and find his hole, already a little loose.

“You planned,” Nicky says, delighted, two fingers sliding in easy; even after all this time it still sends a thrill down his spine to think of Joe thinking of him, wanting him while they are doing other things. “In the shower?”

Joe happily hums his assent and says,

“I had a feeling. You were looking at me a lot today, and I know my hair wasn’t that good.”

“Your hair is always good,” Nicky argues.

“Lies, you remember Isfahan in ’35,” Joe says, and Nicky laughs because yes, he does.

“Your hair is _usually_ good,” Nicky amends, and Joe laughs too.

Joe looks at him curiously but he’s also clenching deliberately around Nicky’s fingers, doing that very distracting thing with his hands on Nicky’s neck, and it takes Nicky a moment to remember what the implied question was, a moment longer to focus on the dim not-Joe silhouettes at the edges of his sun-soaked mind enough to answer it.

“Nile was asking Andy why she doesn’t see us kissing,” Nicky explains, and he doesn’t have to say anything more, because Joe understands perfectly, gets the same way when something makes him think about touching Nicky at a time when it’s better he doesn’t.

They kiss a while longer, Nicky’s fingers working in Joe’s hole, until Joe grunts and bites at his lips in the way that means he needs more, and then Nicky reluctantly pries himself away to find the lube in the bag Joe was rummaging in before. He doesn’t have to ask how Joe wants it; he’s on his back again, towel helpfully placed underneath him, hands hooked behind his thighs, holding himself open, beaming at Nicky like he’s won some sort of prize. Nicky’s heart swells and his cock swells and he’s barely aware of slicking himself, ditching the bottle, climbing back onto the bed. It’s all irrelevant, all that matters is the heat of Joe’s body welcoming him inside, the way Joe’s arms and legs wrap around him immediately, pulling him in.

Nicky does like everything they do, likes it soft and sweet or hard and desperate, likes fucking and being fucked, likes drawn-out teasing and rushed intensity and lazing in each other’s arms with orgasm as an afterthought. But he’d be lying if he claimed that he doesn’t especially love this, rocking into the hot clutch of Joe’s body with Joe clinging to him, urging him on with his hands and his noises. Nicky knows being fucked on his back like this makes Joe feel just a little vulnerable, in a good way; knows having Nicky’s bulk pressing him down makes him feel secure; knows the combination makes him crave kisses and Nicky’s arm around his shoulders, keeping him close. Nicky gives it all to him eagerly, bracing himself on one arm just enough to move but not enough to take much of his weight away from Joe, holding him tightly, kissing his lips and cheeks and nose.

Nicky knows, too, that Joe knows exactly what it does to him when Joe asks for this in particular after Nicky’s been feeling a bit raw, how it burns off any vestiges of self-consciousness and leaves him revelling in the joy of needing and being needed in return.

Being inside Joe, being with Joe in every way possible, is exquisite. The pleasure of moving together, tasting Joe’s groans in his mouth and Joe’s fingers digging fleeting bruises into his back and Joe’s cock hard and leaking against his belly, builds higher and tighter, a trembling, sizzling coil in Nicky’s gut. He can tell Joe’s close too, his hitching breaths shading into whimpers every time Nicky’s thrusts graze his prostate, and Nicky’s about to try to get his hand on Joe to help him over the edge when Joe seizes up and spills between them. The sudden extra pressure around his cock and Joe’s growl of immense satisfaction have Nicky following a heartbeat later.

He pulls out and melts, boneless, into Joe’s embrace. Coming is good, coming with Joe is always good, but staying close after is no less so, only a different sort of gratification. It’s Joe who eventually flails an arm out to find the washcloth on the bedside table, because he knows Nicky will have put it there just like he knows Nicky wouldn’t remember to look for it now. They have over the years perfected the post-coital acrobatics of wiping off what needs wiping without ever really separating, of kicking away the towel and getting under the blanket without at any point letting go of one another. They can be more brisk and practical about it if they need to be but there’s nothing Nicky likes better than this, letting the heady surge of orgasm fade slowly into the soft euphoria of being cradled in Joe’s arms without ever breaking contact.

Nicky has always been profoundly grateful that some small corner of his mind somehow manages to stay alert to danger even when everything else is filled with Joe, so he can sleep with Joe holding him without it being an unreasonable risk; he thinks of that corner as a stoic little sentinel, standing watch through the night while everyone else in the city of his head is blissfully passed out in a Joe-induced stupor. Giving up Joe’s touch now would be torture. He would do it, if he had to in order to keep Joe safe, would endure anything to keep him from harm, but he is so thankful that he doesn’t have to.

“Want me to get the light?” Joe asks, in between idle kisses to the back of Nicky’s neck.

“You are the light,” Nicky mumbles, sliding his hand over Joe’s hand where it rests on his chest. Joe laughs quietly, sweetly, and hugs him tighter.

“If I am the light then you are the lens, my love, giving me shape and focus,” Joe tells him.

“I’ll give you anything, just keep shining,” Nicky says, knitting their fingers together.

“For you, always,” Joe promises, squeezing Nicky’s hand, and Nicky basks in his glow, and nothing else matters.


End file.
